Loose Links: Roc Marciano, DJ Screw, Stilltown

Happy New Year to you and yours, from the DX Fam-A-Lam. Bottles were popped, resolutions were set, and we even spent the first day of 2011 talking about Hip Hop at a coffee shop. We wish success to all of our friends, readers, peers and – as Killer Mike would say, even our haters. We love you all. May the best of our yesterdays be the worst of our tomorrows, word to champagne burps.

Today the Pittsburgh Penguins will play the Washington Capitals in 2011’s Winter Classic. It’ll be a melty mess, and DX’s EIC missed an opportunity to talk Hip Hop in a coffee shop with a peer/friend, which was a true win. Journalist, radio host and Hip Hop lover Rory Webb has compiled a dope site that celebrates past, present and future of Rap music in Pittsburgh. STiLLTOWN breaks down the music from the city that’s giving us Wiz Khalifa and Sam Sneed albums this new year. We encourage you, wherever you’re from, to check it out.

Phillip Mlynar is a super talented journalist that celebrates many of the same things our editorial loves about this culture. At one of our favorite sites, UnKut.com, he breaks down all the food references on Roc Marciano’s stellar debut, Marcberg – an album that we really championed in our Year End coverage. Going back to Ghostface fish and pasta references, and Kool Keith’s occasional food tangents, this is quality content, and well worth your time.

Another amazing Hip Hop writer is Cocaine Blunts’ Noz, and we’re not just saying that ’cause he turned our staff onto Odd Future or writes occasionally for DX. As we look back at last year musically, it’s important to realize that one of the people who’s been gone for over a decade continues to influence our sound. Noz wrote a short-but-great editorial on how and why this is true, and it really resonated.